SBE launches advisory services collective to support scaleup businesses, with support of BDO as key partner
New advisory services marketplace called "SBE Advisory Collective”, will power female-founded businesses to higher growth
Partners include BDO, Corrs Chambers Westgarth, Real Time Australia and other leading firms
Data underscores need for more support for female-founded businesses
Australia’s peak body for supporting women entrepreneurs, SBE Australia, has today announced the launch of a new advisory model which will connect high potential female-founded businesses with the services they need to achieve high growth. Leading global professional services firm, BDO has been named key partner.
The SBE Advisory Collective, launches in response to last year’s inaugural research report which showed that through 2017-2021, just 3.7% of private sector funding secured by start-ups went to solely women-founded companies (SBE and Techboard Data). This then dropped to an even lower 0.7% in 2021-22.
Deloitte researchers surveyed 155 individual businesses that were supported by three major female focused investor groups: SBE Australia, Heads over Heels, and Scale Investors. Based on survey data from past participants, Deloitte estimates that the 341 businesses supported by SBE Australia, Heads over Heels, and Scale Investors over the past 10 years that are still active facilitated economic activity worth just over $1 billion to the Australian economy, and almost 5,000 equivalent full-time roles, in 2021-22.
The report highlighted important insights on social, financial and cultural barriers that still exist and prevent women from reaching equal participation in entrepreneurship.
“What that research did was illuminate a gaping hole in support for funding women-led businesses in general,” said Nicole Cook, CEO of SBE Australia. “It was jarring. When we started the research project, we thought the percentage of funding going into the channel would be far greater.”
“We stepped back and questioned - why, though so many promising women-led businesses exist, are they not getting funded? A major finding was that while support for early-stage businesses through accelerator programs and grants is fairly strong, there is a cohort in the middle that just don’t have the critical support they need to get funded for commercialisation. They are the group that sit between early and mature businesses, what we would call ‘scaleup’.”
Now in its 11th year of operations, alumni of SBE’s various programs represent more than 110 businesses classified as ‘scaleup’ and more than 250 startups (early-stage businesses.) Across the many success stories, >$2b in capital has been raised, 17 exits have been recorded as IPOs or trade sales and thousands of jobs have been created both in Australia and offshore. SBE Advisory Collective’s pure focus is on providing high growth scale-ups with the strategic support needed to achieve their goals.
“This is about providing the critical support that the ‘scaleup’ cohort needs to qualify for funding through our existing programs and now through advisory services delivered by our partners through the Advisory Collective,” said Cook. “We’ve learnt that the current ecosystem of support for women founders is disjointed and is not going to stimulate parity in entrepreneurship fast enough. By wrapping advice around the scaleup founders and CEOs, they can be better placed to achieve their business growth metrics and qualify for investment. We hope that by doubling down on building a pipeline of investment-ready scaleup businesses, the quantum of funding allocations going to women-led businesses will get closer to parity.”
The Advisory Collective is designed to provide a boost to these mid-stage businesses that are moving into a level of maturity where they require specific advice to unlock growth or prepare for exit. While many will be well known to SBE, having been through one of their accelerator programs, Ms Cook hopes that other businesses at similar stages may come forward which qualify for the advisory services and need help reaching commercialisation milestones. Equally, while there are around 100 service providers included in the Advisory Collective, she welcomes other specialists that can contribute expert services to SBE members.
“The natural candidates to access the advisory services will have completed one of our accelerators, but there are many other businesses out there not yet known to us that need this kind of support. We also encourage those teams to get in touch, to become SBE members and get access to a group of services that can otherwise be very hard to access independently.”
Leading global professional services firm, BDO joins as an anchor partner to SBE’s new Elevate program and as a platinum partner in the Advisory Collective. It will offer business mentoring, support and resources across the areas of accounting, tax and consulting services.
Tim Aman, who is the firm’s global Fintech leader commented on this growing area of interest for BDO, “Partially for BDO this partnership is about having an active voice on the importance of gender diversity and inclusivity in business. Commercially though, if we do a good job of supporting women-led scaleups, we know we can have a positive, long-ranging and historic impact on how the Australian business ecosystem operates.”
Other SBE Advisory Collective partners include legal firms Corrs Chambers Westgarth and Hamilton and Locke, investor and public relations consultancy IR Department and real-time recruitment firm, Real Time Australia plus specialist accounting firm for start-ups and high growth businesses, Standard Ledger. In addition, expert sole proprietors from the SBE global network across a range of specialist domains, from global expansion strategies to executive coaching, have signed on as part of the Advisory Collective.
SBE alumni, Dr Sheridan Gho’s experience as CEO and Co-founder of Cenofex Innovations underscores the need for focused advisory. Dr Gho completed the SBE Life Sciences program in 2020 to help move her medical device for lymphoedema management through the development chain. "This is the first business I've founded and so, while I had a handle on the technical and scientific skills I needed to succeed, I invested time in a few different types of courses to help me develop my business expertise."
"I did the SBE Life Sciences program in 2020 and have participated in a number of workshops since then. They were different in that rather than focusing on the company - like other courses I had done - this was focused on the founder. I had been an academic, a researcher, a founder, but didn't have the experience of being a formidable business woman!" Since the time of the course, Dr Gho says she has "fairly consistently leaned in on the SBE business expertise". When the SBE Advisory Collective launched and she was invited to join (which includes a small monthly or annual membership), she asked her co-founder what he thought. "In a start-up environment, you're always stretching dollars. He said, 'We probably pay more for coffee, and you have already gained so much benefit from the SBE community.' We agreed it was a worthwhile investment.”
As well as curating appropriate service providers, the SBE membership provides access to masterclasses and other networking and educational resources, which have been hallmarks of SBE's offering over recent years.
Dr Gho says that she has sat in on a number of them over time. “These masterclasses teach you much more about how to run a business. They focus on the company, the culture and also the softer skills. And they provide you with an invaluable network. I came with the technical skills - the science, the research background, but hearing from other people's experiences has really helped." Being a founder or a CEO can be an isolating journey to be on, Dr Gho says, "Even just knowing that other people have been there, build that, and were also challenged - knowing you're not alone is comforting. It's good to hear those war stories and know that others have found a way through and seen success. Having that sense of a guiding light is important."
Nicole Cook says that the launch of the SBE Advisory Collective is just the next step in how we will solve the parity issue. “The issue of parity is an area we’re looking at very closely to get a sense of what that means in entrepreneurship and the deployment of capital. It would see us working with others to put some real goals down on paper to work towards. It’s a bit early to say too much more at this stage, but expect to hear more from us on this soon.”
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